soon as you like, as soon as you have got me into it. But John has got no motive,” he said again, with a sort of garrulous pathos; “he’ll gain nothing. He’ll rather lose something perhaps, for he couldn’t have the run of the house if it were yours, as he has done all his life. Yours!” the sick man added, with concentrated wrath and scorn; “it shall never be yours; I shall see to that. Where is the note to Charley—Charley Blake? John, take charge of it for me; see that it’s put in the post. She has the bag in her hands, and how can I tell whether she will let it go? She was a great deal too ready to write it, eh? don’t you think, knowing it was against herself?”
After this cheerful morning’s talk, which was the ordinary kind of conversation that went on in Mr. Trevanion’s room, from which John Trevanion could escape and did very shortly, but Madam could not and did not, the heavy day went on, little varied. Mrs. Trevanion appeared at lunch with a sufficiently tranquil countenance, and entered into the ordinary talk of a family party with a composure or philosophy which was a daily miracle to the rest. She checked little Sophy’s impertinences and attended to the small pair of young ones like a mother embarrassed with no cares less ignoble. There was an air of great gravity about her, but not more than the critical condition of her husband’s health made natural. And the vicar, who came in to lunch to ask after the squire, saw nothing in Madam’s manner that was not most natural and seemly. He told his wife afterwards that she took it beautifully; “Very serious, you know, very anxious, but resigned and calm.” Mrs. Vicar was of opinion that were she Mrs. Trevanion she would be more than resigned, for everybody knew that Madam had “a great deal to put up with.” But from her own aspect no one could have told the continual flood of insult to which she was exposed, the secret anxiety that was gnawing at her heart. In the evening, before dinner, she met her brother-in-law by accident before the great fireplace in the hall. She was sitting there, thrown down in one of the deep chairs, like a worn-out creature. It was rare to see her there, though it was the common resort of the household, and so much, in spite of himself, had John Trevanion been moved by the sense of mystery about, and by his brother’s vituperations, that his first glance was one of suspicion. But his approach took her by surprise. Her face was hidden in her hands, and there was an air of abandon in her attitude and figure as if she had thrown herself, like a wounded animal, before the fire. She uncovered her face, and, he thought, furtively, hastily dried her eyes as she turned to see who was coming. Pity was strong in his heart, notwithstanding his suspicion, he came forward and looked down upon her kindly. “I am very glad,” he said, “to see that you are able to get a moment to yourself.”
“Yes,” she said, “Reginald seems more comfortable to-night.”
“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “it is beyond human patience. You ought not to have all this to bear.”
“Oh, nothing is beyond human patience,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a smile. “Never mind, I can bear it very well. After all, there is no novelty in it to wound me. I have been bearing the same sort of thing for many years.”
“And you have borne it without a murmur. You are a very wonderful woman, or—”
“What do you mean? Do you think me a bad one? It would not be wonderful after all you have heard. But I am not a bad woman, John. I am not without blame; who is? But I am not what he says. This is mere weakness to defend myself; but when one has been beaten down all day long by one perpetual flood like a hailstorm— What was that? I thought I heard Reginald’s voice.”
“It was nothing; some of the servants. I am very sorry for you, Grace. If anything can be done to ease you—”
“Nothing can be done. I think talking does him good; and what is the use of a man’s wife if not to hear everything he has to say? It diverts the evil from others, and I hope from himself too. Yes, I do think so; it is an unpleasant way of working it out, and yet I think, like the modes they adopt in surgery sometimes, it relieves the system. So let him talk,” she went on with a sigh. “It will be hard, though, if I am to lose the support of your good opinion, John.”
To this he made no direct answer, but asked, hurriedly, “What do you suppose he wants with Charley Blake? Charley specially, not his father, whom I have more faith in?”
“Something about his will, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not anything of consequence. He tries to scare me, threatening something—but it is not for that that I am afraid.”
“We shall be able to do you justice in that point. Of what are you afraid?”
She rose with a sudden impulse and stood by him in the firelight, almost as tall as he, and with a certain force of indignation in her which gave her an air of command and almost grandeur beside the man who suspected and hesitated. “Nothing!” she said, as if she flung all apprehension from her. John, whose heart had been turned from her, felt himself melting against his will. She repeated after a time, more gently, “I know that if passion can suggest anything it will be done. And he will not have time to reconsider, to let his better nature—” (here she paused, and in spite of herself a faint smile, in which there was some bitterness, passed over her face) “his better nature speak,” she said, slowly; “therefore I am prepared for everything and fear nothing.”
“This sounds not like courage, but despair.”
“And so it is. Is it wonderful that it should be despair rather than courage after all these years? I am sure there is something wrong. Listen; don’t you hear it? That is certainly Reginald’s voice.”
“No, no, you are excited. What could it be? He wants something, perhaps, and he always calls loudly for whatever he wants. It is seldom I can see you for a moment. I want to tell you that I will see Blake and find out from him—”
“I must go to Reginald, John.”
She was interrupted before she had crossed the hall by the sudden appearance of Russell, who pushed through the curtain which hung over the passage leading to Mr. Trevanion’s room, muffling herself in it in her awkwardness. The woman was scared and trembling. “Where’s Madam, Madam?” she said. “She’s wanted; oh, she’s wanted badly! He’s got a fit again.”
Mrs. Trevanion flew past the trembling woman like a shadow. “It is your doing,” she said, with a voice that rung into Russell’s heart. The intruder was entirely unhinged. “I never saw him in one before. It’s dreadful; oh, it’s dreadful! Doctor! doctor! oh, where’s the doctor?” she cried, losing all command of herself, and shrieking forth the name in a way which startled the house. The servants came running from all sides; the children, terror-stricken, half by the cry, half by the sound of Russell’s voice, so familiar to them, appeared, a succession of little wistful faces, upon the stair, while the doctor himself pushed through, startled, but with all his wits about him. “How has it happened? You’ve been carrying your ill-tempered chatter to him. I’ll have you tried for manslaughter,” the doctor said.
CHAPTER XI
Rosalind Trevanion was a girl who had never had a lover—at least, such was her own conviction. She even resented the fact a little, thinking it wonderful that when all the girls in novels possessed such interests she had none. To attain to the mature age of eighteen, in a wealthy and well-known house where there were many visitors, and where she had all the advantages that a good position can give, without ever having received that sign of approbation which is conveyed by a declaration of love, was very strange in the point of view of fiction. And as she had few friends of her own age at hand to consult with, and an absorbing attachment and friendship for an older woman to fill up the void, novels were her chief informants as to the ordinary events of youthful life. It is an unfortunate peculiarity of these works that their almost exclusive devotion to one subject is too likely to confuse the ideas of young women in this particular. In old-fashioned English fiction, and in the latest American variety of the art,
